#27: Working on a New Song November 30th, 2007
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This is a new version of the original. I tried to tighten it up, tweaked some of the chords (thirds on the bottom! CRAZY), and even tried to incorporate Eric’s good suggestion. I started recording at 11:45 p.m. tonight, after going running with Alex and having dinner with Paul and making cookies and power-cycling the Firepod and panicking about how I couldn’t get sound to come out of it and panicking about how I was getting bad sounds to come out of it and it’s now 11:59 p.m. and I have not failed to bring you Shoebox Full of Tapes for the month of November. I haven’t really checked to see if this came out sounding okay after being filtered through a lot of technology I don’t understand, and this may be the least professional I’ve ever sounded in a SFoT update, but that’s okay because it doesn’t matter. Here, I made this. Here, it’s yours.
At 9:15 pm on December 5th, 2007, Eric wrote:
Hey Lindsey :) I’m glad to hear this song is still wriggling itself around, finding itself…
I still love the chords and the bassline you have–but something felt like it was getting in the way this time, and I didn’t feel it as strongly as I did the first time. I tried to think about why that was, and I have a suggestion that’s just crazy out of left field. Take it for what it’s worth but…
What if the song were about twice as slow as it is right now? Seriously. Twice as slow. (or half as fast?) Give the chords and words some room to breathe– I know that this version is slightly faster than the original, but even after listening to the original, I have to wonder what this song would sound like in a much more sparse arrangement instead of clipping along at its current pace.
Stretch the song out… (no pun intended) wide… long… let the space give each of the lyrics a spotlight, and let the piano’s melody come a little more longingly…
Just a thought. :)
At 6:38 pm on December 6th, 2007, Lindsey wrote:
Hm. I love your advice, but, man, I don’t know. To me, the earlier version seems like it’s dragging. People keep telling me that they like the slow versions of these songs, but that’s not really how I intend the songs to sound.
Also, “longing” doesn’t have to mean “slow”. Longing can be wild. Longing can be manic. Longing can be just barely in control. That’s more what I’m going for.
At 4:42 pm on February 28th, 2008, Derksen wrote:
Feh. For the record, I actually kind of like the unpolished version of “Working on a New Song” better than the polished version. But if that one won’t do for submission, my magic backup secondary vote goes to “You’re Beautiful”. Just for the curious.